Blood Banks Seek Bone Marrow Donors

Blood banks in Palm Beach and Broward counties have joined a nationwide drive to recruit 70,000 potential donors of bone marrow to people suffering life-threatening leukemia and other blood diseases.

The Broward Community Blood Center and the Palm Beach Blood Bank are among 52 blood centers nationally that are expected to provide marrow for transplants to about 2,000 people this year, Dr. John Lane, who administers the program locally, said.

``One can`t express how important it is for these people to have donors. Most will die unless they get into this program,`` Lane said.

Marrow is the tissue inside bones that produces blood cells. When the marrow is diseased, it may not produce enough red or white blood cells, a condition called aplastic anemia. In leukemia, the marrow produces a dangerous oversupply of white blood cells.

The only cure for many people with these diseases is to replace their marrow with healthy marrow from a donor.

But in order to avoid the tissue rejection associated with transplants, candidates for the procedure usually have been limited to people who have close family members able to provide marrow.

The new program, administered by the U.S. Navy, will create a national computerized registry of potential donors whose tissue types can be matched precisely to that of the person in need.

Tissue typing is especially critical in marrow transplants because the white cells produced by the marrow are part of the body`s immune system. If these cells are not a close match to the recipient`s own tissues, the cells may treat them as foreign matter and attack the body itself.

Lane said there are potentially four billion different tissue types. ``Everybody in the world could have a different kind of tissue type, but fortunately they don`t. Some types are more common than others,`` he said.

On the average, though, only one donor in 20,000 is expected to be a match for each person in need of a marrow transplant, Lane said.

Donating marrow is a hospital procedure that is done under general anesthesia. Marrow is extracted through needles inserted into the donor`s hip. About 5 percent of the donor`s marrow is removed but it eventually grows back.

Before a recipient receives the transplant he undergoes radiation treatments which kill all of his own marrow. The new, healthy marrow is given to him as a transfusion.

The closest hospitals performing marrow transplants are in Tampa and Gainesville.

The transplanted marrow cells have a ``homing mechanism`` that allows them to move out of the bloodstream and into the recipient`s bones where they grow quickly, Lane said.

``(The cells) will grow as if they had always lived there,`` he said. ``That small transfusion will actually fill up the bone marrow to 100 percent.`` Up to 70 percent of bone marrow transplants are successful, he said.

Lane said the Broward and Palm Beach County blood banks are seeking a total of 400 to 450 local people under age 55 to volunteer as marrow donors. These donors will be selected from a group of about 600 who already have been tissue typed after volunteering to donate blood platelets and other parts of their blood on a regular basis, he said.